Gaming aficionado ingeniously creates a five screen racing gaming rig

Have a fleeting reverie of yourself in appropriate racing attire (of course, along with the essential gloves), perched in your driver's seat and looking over the bright sun lit track. While the pulsating race is about to commence, you observe your fellow competitors through the window in their equally impressive rides, raring to join in the blistering experience. Now, imagine all of these are done in a fascinating virtual set up, where five different monitors act as the wind shield and the side windows of your car. Because that is exactly what racing simulation aficionado Chad Smith has adroitly achieved with his very own customized gaming rig.

Gaming aficionado ingeniously creates a five screen racing gaming rig

He has managed to contrive a racing simulator using five different screens with an essence of real time applicability. In the picture (you see above), the creator is actually playing iRacing, which is a popular massively multiplayer online racing simulation. But in brilliant twist of technological aptitude, he has actually managed to incorporate different screens for different viewing angles found in real time. For example, when he is looking through his wind shield (or the two conjoined monitors in front of him) he can see the expansive track with digitalized trees lining it. Then again, when he is looking through his left side window (or the two conjoined monitors attached on his left side), he could see his fellow virtual racers ready to go in their boisterous racing vehicles. Even his right window consists of a single monitor, giving a virtual (yet different) view of that surrounding. So, finally the overall rig gives that intriguing feeling of reality where you swerve and turn and battle it out from the comforts of your living room.

Coming to technical side of affairs, the track (both shown in the picture and later video) is the detailed virtual representation of Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The master viewpoint is stretched across the space of five LCD screens, supposedly with a whopping 9600x1080 resolution. According to the rig designer, he has used an AMD Radeon HD 6870 graphics card, which gives a significant output of around 84 frames per second. As for the iPhone connection, Smith had used an iRaceDash app (available for iOS), ultimately mounted on to his force-feedback steering wheel. This sweet $4.99 application actually helps closet racers to be provided with a slew of real-time data regarding their ride's intrinsic performance. These in turn includes a myriad of parameters, such as speed, fuel level and even tire condition.

The innovative conception as a whole does allude to the enhanced level of reality features that are fast becoming the cornerstone of our ever thriving gaming industry. More importantly, it embodies the accentuated yet accessible technology, which ardent gamers look forward to in their virtual experience. As a matter of fact, the five screen gaming rig can be considered almost analogous to the robust military simulators. Of course, in this case, we have a product without all the highfalutin paraphernalia associated with those simulations. This gives us gaming buffs a clear glimpse into the fascinating future, where we can take part in nigh realistic settings from our very living rooms, albeit within a credible budget.

Image Courtesy: YouTube and ChadSmith20

Source: Tecca